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I decided to make an easy dinner tonight to take down to see Shaun, Shannon and Sarah. I’ve decided to take Sunday night with Sarah when I can and when Shaun and Shannon aren’t busy or tired!

Look at how cute the girl was tonight, this is what she had on at church. Look at that adorable headband, that her dad picked out I will add! She was so well coordinated.

Since I bribe her parents with dinner in exchange for getting to hold her for an hour or two, I took them dinner.

I found an incredibly healthy vegetarian dish a while back called tempeh tamale pie (or something along those lines). This recipe used tempeh (which is a soy product,) I subbed ground turkey breast. Also, in the original recipe she made the sauce and corn bread from scratch (and vegan), I just was not up for that so I decided to make something a little more my speed while trying to keep it a little healthy. My effort is to make sure as much of it as possible is organic, this one is about 75% organic ingredients. So here it is!

What you need:

Ground Turkey Breast (1 lb) (Organic)

1.5 Cups Enchilada Sauce

1 can Pinto beans (Organic)

1 box of Jiffy (or whatever) corn muffin mix

1.5 cups corn (thawed if frozen)

1 Egg (Organic)

1/4 Cups Milk (plus about a tbsp if the mix looks dry) (Organic)

1 Cup Cheddar cheese

To start, brown the ground turkey breast.

While that is browning, I thawed the corn and mixed together the corn, egg, milk and corn muffin mix in a bowl.

Once the meat is done, mix together the kidney beans and enchilada sauce and place in a baking dish.

Sprinkle the cheese on top… mmm, cheese 🙂

Lastly, spread the corn bread mix on top of that

Bake this at 375 for 25-30 minutes or until the top is browning. I didn’t take a picture of the done deal because I wanted to get down to Shaun and Shannon’s! This is a super easy dinner to throw together and really isn’t all that bad for you. It will make 6 servings unless you are really, really hungry. It has 347 calories and 9 grams of fat.

I think this was a hit with Shaun and Shannon, they said they liked it and I certainly did. I took a small simple salad (romaine lettuce, tomato and cucumber) as a side to make sure we got our veggies.

I will absolutely trade food any night if I can spend some time with miss Sarah. I got to feed her tonight and she was cracking me up. First, while the poor girl was sleeping, she let rip an adult soundeding fart. I mean, Shaun was in the other room and asked if it was Shannon or me. I’m recording this for posterity to embarrass her later in life. Second, after I fed her and was trying to burp her, she kept smiling as I was patting her back (and refusing to burp btw). I mean, it was like she was mocking me as I was giving her a shiatsu massage. I finally got a burp out of her, it just took a while.

I have a note on ground turkey since we were talking about this tonight. I’m a HUGE fan of ground turkey breast in place of ground beef in almost everything. My two exceptions are burgers (even though I love a good turkey burger, they just don’t have the same taste) and meatballs or meat sauce when it comes to spaghetti. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll sub ground turkey breast for myself in meat sauce but I wouldn’t do that if I was cooking for other people. Anyway, my point tonight was about ground turkey vs. ground turkey breast. To me, there is nearly ZERO point in buying ground turkey unless you are really worried about your cholesterol because I’d almost always rather buy the lowest fat ground beef over the regular ground turkey, you just don’t save that much fat unless you are buying the ground turkey breast. The lesson here is that if you are really concerned with controlling fat and think you are being super healthy buying ground turkey, you really should be looking for ground turkey breast in my humble non-dietician, self-educated opinion.

I’ll get off my soap box and get ready for sleep now. BTW…How about those VMA’s, I haven’t watched this in a while, I’m glad I did tonight. I love Justin Timberlake and he got a few awards and put on QUITE the show. I just adore him… Jessica Timberlake is a lucky lady (and he’s lucky to have her)!!!!

Like this:

On Monday, I decided to make Chicken Tortilla Soup to have for lunch a few days this week. I think I’ll get 7 servings out of this depending on how full I fill my bowl! I’m planning to freeze about half of this.

What you’ll need:

Chicken breast (about 1 to 1.5 lbs)

1 Large Onion

1 Green Pepper (I added in some red and yellow pepper too that I had around for salads)

Crushed Tomato (1 large can)

Green Chili’s (fresh or canned)

Corn (fresh, frozen, canned… this is totally up to you)

3 (ish) Cups Chicken Broth/Stock (or water and some bullion cubes)

Chili Powder, Cumin and Garlic Powder

Corn Meal

Cilantro

Tortilla strips or chips and shredded cheese for toppings

I didn’t really follow much of a recipe here. I looked at a few online, but really jumped out at me and I’d been craving it for a while. I bought some from the grocery store, and it was really good, but also pricey (Giant Eagle really got me on that, I got like 3 cups but it cost like $7).

I cooked the chicken breast in the crock pot this morning. I’ve found that if I basically poach it in there with some chicken broth and water, it shreds really easily and stays pretty moist. I like to do this to have for different lunches throughout the week.

Once that was ready to go, I sauteed the veggies in a little olive oil just to get them softened.

Then I added in about 3 cups of chicken broth, the crushed tomato, the canned chilies, the corn and the chicken. If you know me and my cooking style, unless I’m baking I don’t really measure things like this much unless it’s really going to affect the end result.

So I eyeballed the seasoning, probably about 2 tsp of chili powder and 1-2 of cumin and then just a dash or two of garlic powder.

I added in the seasoning and stirred it all together and then let it simmer. About 30-60 minutes in, I put about a Tbsp of corn meal in some warm water to dissolve and then stirred it in.

I let it all sit and simmer on low for about 2 hours. At the very end, I threw in a little bit of cilantro. This is totally up to you! I like it, so I put in a small handful. I know some of my friends hate it, so it can be left out.

If I have 6 servings, it will have only 171 calories and 2.5 grams of fat. But honestly, I’m probably going to get at least 7 out of it.

I topped my small bowl with a little cheese and some tortilla strips. This was really good, probably could have used a little more salt as I only put in a few dashes.